


The Hallowgrim

by wyvernwood



Category: Chronicles of Amber - Roger Zelazny
Genre: Enemies and also Lovers, F/M, Negotiations, Shapeshifting, canon loss of limb
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-11
Updated: 2020-02-11
Packaged: 2021-02-27 20:00:30
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,557
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22661389
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wyvernwood/pseuds/wyvernwood
Summary: Benedict gains and then loses a new ability. Lintra wins and then loses a war. They think they're using each other. A greater power is using them both.
Relationships: Benedict/Lintra
Comments: 6
Kudos: 8
Collections: Chocolate Box - Round 5





	The Hallowgrim

**Author's Note:**

  * For [the_rck](https://archiveofourown.org/users/the_rck/gifts).



It was not arguments over his being illegitimate that had driven Benedict of Amber from the Court of Amber. It was his discovery of his father's having deprived him, and all his siblings, of what should have been their birthright, the ability to change their shape.

He had known from before he could remember that his father had this power, but he had thought it a singular ability. As it turned out, it was not. 

Benedict held the object he had quested for in his hand and turned it this way and that. It was the size of a coin and formed of an ornately knotted wire that did not seem to move, yet changed constantly into new tangles and weaves. Trying to follow its shifting shape made his head ache as though his skull had been hit by the flat of a sword the day before. 

His other hand held his dagger steady as he sliced shallowly into the meat of his forearm. Benedict dropped the dagger and shifted the artifact from one hand to the other, then carefully pressed it against the wound.

It slipped under his skin and vanished, somehow closing the wound behind itself as it did so. He stroked his hand over the place where the charm had gone in. Benedict healed fast, but that wound had vanished far more quickly than was natural, even for him.

A day's hellride brought him back to the land he had been living in. It was a fine place, rather like Amber in pleasant ways, and unlike it in the complete absence of his family. At least in the present time — it seemed his brother, or more likely a shadow of that brother, had ruled the place a century back. His family was difficult to entirely escape, especially so near to Amber. 

The benefits of the trinket were immediate. Despite the temptation to exercise his new power, Benedict was cautious about changing his appearance. He had followers, and he did not want to inconvenience himself by negatively impacting morale. He had never shifted shape, and wanted to learn it gradually without drawbacks.

Changing small things, the length of his arms, their strength, and then sparring with his men, he noticed that his centuries-ingrained instincts were no longer completely applicable. That was dangerous. He would be vulnerable in any unfamiliar shape, Benedict thought, so he must find opportunities to practice. 

The environmental effects took longer to make themselves known. Strange beings began to be noted in the area, demons that were unlike anything the people here knew. He sent scouting parties out to investigate and they failed to return. 

Benedict led a scouting party himself and saw the demons for the first time. They were beautiful.

Each had a narrow symmetrical face and a waving banner of pale hair streaming out from under a filigree helmet. Their armor covered the rest of their bodies entirely. "Hellmaids," one of the men in his scouting party said, and that became the name everyone called them. 

His soldiers seemed to think they were all women. Benedict was not himself so sure. Long hair and a beardless face did not always mean that, not in every world, and Benedict did not think these invaders were from this one.

The hellmaid raiding parties fought fiercely, but Benedict was peerless at strategy and his soldiers held their own for the first few months of skirmishing. 

Over that time period, he learned to control the power of the artifact in his arm. It burned in there, barely noticeable at most times, intensely when he used it to change himself. Only in small ways, ones no one would notice, strengthening his bones and making them more flexible, changing the blood in his veins. He nearly suffocated himself the first time he tried that, or would it be blood loss? Deprived himself of life, one way or another, but he survived, his body returning in extremis to its accustomed state. 

It was a struggle to understand the innermost parts of himself that might be altered, so as to ensure the alteration was what he desired. Months, especially months in which he led a nation at war, did not provide enough time. But Benedict had time, or would. His life should be many more centuries in which to learn to use the ability he should have been born with, should have already known as well as he knew a blade or a supply line. His teeth gritted, not only against the burning in his arm.

Then the hellmaids changed their strategy, it seemed to Benedict. His men began falling ill of previously unknown complaints, skin blackening from a spot or ring that spread and paralyzed the limb, or losing the ability to speak and eat due to swollen tongues and throats, or simply becoming so lethargic they could not rise to reach the latrine, but soiled themselves in their bedrolls. 

He set sentries to catch the poisoners, the spreaders of disease, but they caught no one. The next few battles did not go well for his weakened troops. Strategy and leadership could not substitute for health. 

Benedict thought perhaps he could try similar tactics, but they were unlikely to work since he did not know the demons' vulnerabilities. He had nearly resigned himself to losing this territory and was considering his options for retreat, with or without his troops, when a single hellmaid on foot was spotted by an advance scout. 

He hastened to accept the offer of parley. Benedict sent his own armored, unarmed messenger to meet the enemy's, and so it was arranged.

Their leader, Lintra, was a woman, even if not all the hellmaids were, Benedict thought. Her strange appearance made her no less beautiful. His best soldiers accompanied him to the meeting place, one that had been chosen by the delegates together. It was an inn built high in a mountain pass, embedded in stone but owned and staffed for generations by a single human family. This was a neutral place, or close enough.

The hellmaid general insisted that they meet alone, one on one, the two leaders. This was not especially strange as negotiations went, but he hadn't expected it from a woman. A party of hellmaid warriors and a party of Benedict's lieutenants sat warily at either end of the inn's common room while he and Lintra went together up the stairs to one of the rooms the inn kept for travelers. 

Going up to a bedroom with a woman seemed like an unlikely way to parley. Then again, many treaties were sealed with marriage. He did not think she wanted that, nor that he would be inclined if she did, but his mind went down that road anyway. 

"If we are to make peace, my first condition is that you cease poisoning my men and making them ill," Benedict began once the door closed behind them. "Without that, there is no point speaking of anything else."

"I cannot cease doing what I am not doing in the first place," Lintra said. 

It was possible. But he doubted it severely. "There are illnesses seen that were never seen before." 

"That is none of our doing. It is the hallowgrim." 

Benedict did not know that word. "Another strange creature? Where is it you come from, Lintra? Why do you invade this place? If I knew what you wanted, I might find us a way out of the conflict."

"Not a creature, a device," Lintra said. "Small, twisted and black, it carries the power of chaos. There is one, I sense it — on your person, Protector." The title was the only name she had for him. She said it with a twist of her lips that showed she knew its meaning and disagreed.

"I see. Is it to find this hallowgrim that you invade my land, then?"

"My liege bade me to this place for reasons I was not given. But once I arrived, I sensed the hallowgrim. I believe that retrieving it is my mission, yes. And it seems we have reached a bargain, Protector. Give me the hallowgrim and I will take it far from your people. Then the new illnesses that plague them will leave them also."

Benedict thought of the new power he had only just regained, the years or decades of learning to use it that lay ahead. His fingers curled into a fist. "I need it." His other hand lay protectively over the place in his arm where the artifact was hidden.

Lintra's strange pale eyes tracked the movement. "You do not," she said, her voice softer and less official, more like other women who spoke to Benedict than like an enemy general. 

"If I take it and leave this place, will your raids cease? And the illnesses," he added.

"If you depart, the illness will go with you, but my raids will continue until we have taken all the enslaved minds we require to pursue you where you have gone," Lintra said, her voice now sharp and cruel. 

He frowned and did not say anything, thinking. His fingers unclenched from the fist, other hand's fingers rubbing the spot where the hallowgrim had entered his body. The burning intensified.

"But, Protector," and her voice was soft again, "tell me what you need it for. There may be another way."

Benedict was not sure he should tell her, but she seemed already to know more of the object than he did, and none of this was of strategic importance. "My father is a shapeshifter and I wish to have that power for myself. The artifact granted it to me."

"Can you change yourself into a shapeshifting creature with it, then give it to me when you have done so? Giving us both what we need." 

That was possible? "I have not yet mastered the skill," he admitted. "Once I can achieve that, you may have it. If you are content to wait, I will give you my word."

"Your word," she said, laughter in her voice. 

He was angry but if she did not know his name, she had no reason to know why his word was sufficient. He wondered if he should tell her, should say — her fingers were stroking the back of his hand, relaxing it, so his hand was resting on the inside of his forearm quietly. "Benedict of Amber," he said. It felt again as though he were a man with a woman, not a general with an enemy. She should know his name. 

He saw recognition in her expression. Her face seemed less alien in astonished realization. "I cannot wait, but I can teach you," she said, fingers still stroking. It was very pleasant.

Benedict realized the burning sensation was gone. The artifact lay quiescent under his skin. He could still feel it, but there was no pain at all for the first time since he had put it there. "How did you," he began.

"Lie down," she said, "and let me show you."

It was an intimate sort of lesson. Benedict had always learned well with his body, or he would not have been the greatest swordsman in all the worlds, but he had not been taught anything like this, from the inside out, never. Lintra flowed through the tangled interweaving of his blood vessels to his heart, she slid down his throat and all through him, most especially in the arm where the hallowgrim lay. And he also flowed through her, reciprocation. They shared their bodies for several hours.

"Benedict, the strength of your bones," she said, and "your fertility has been compromised, do you want control," and "if you change this your healing may be strange." He agreed or demurred or asked questions without words, for part of the time he could not speak, but he knew Lintra understood, and she gave him the answers he needed.

When it was done, she made a small incision at the site where he had put the hallowgrim into his arm and began to draw it out, the narrow black coil of it wrapping around her finger. It looked like a dark metal ring when she had finished, a neat dozen smooth loops. 

"I will take this and go," Lintra said. "I believe my liege will not bid me return." 

"Give your word you will not," Benedict said. "A truce."

"My word is worth nothing. I am no one of nowhere." She kissed his lips, and hers were cold. "Be well." A phrase that sounded peaceful enough, but the look she gave him after the kiss was so sharp he felt he had been stabbed by it. She put her armor back on swiftly without looking at him again.

The burning in Benedict's arm returned as she left the room.

He stared at it. A small black circle formed under the skin, knotting itself irregularly, sinking deeper so it barely was grayed in tone, easily mistaken for veins. 

The strange diseases retreated as inexplicably as they had come on. Not entirely gone, but they were for the next few months so rare that they no longer impacted battle-readiness. That was all the Protector required.

The raids ceased for a full season and when they resumed, the leader was a different hellmaid. The year advanced well into rainy hot weather before Lintra reappeared. She brought a larger army with her than Benedict's people had yet seen, and they did not look to be committing to a simple raid. There were thousands of dead-eyed human infantry in the wake of the mounted hellmaids. 

"She has broken the truce. I will fight her myself." Benedict's second in command brightened at the news. The Protector would defeat these hellmaids once and for all, now that the diseases no longer weakened his troops. 

He expected to have no trouble. He was a far greater swordsman than any being, and his brothers were the only ones who might require his all-out effort. 

But at first Lintra did not want to fight him. She wanted to talk. "The truce is broken," Benedict said, refusing. "Had you wanted another parley, this was not the way." 

"You tricked me," she said, fury in her tone. "But I tricked you too, son of Amber." Lintra's hand reached for him, and he turned his horse aside. She closed her fingers into a clawed fist and twisted her arm, and his forearm burned so hot he gasped in surprise. The sword in his hand tumbled to the ground as his hand crumbled into ash, then his wrist. 

Benedict could have run her through. It would have taken little more than the thought and a single swift motion. But she turned her steed's head away. "Peace at last," she said, harsh, and a Trump doorway appeared to a place Benedict had never seen. Lintra leaped through, from the saddle, and then was gone.

The arm was a loss, but it should grow back eventually. When he tried, later, Benedict found he could not change himself at all. Nor did his arm seem eager to regrow itself. Whatever he had found, it seemed, Lintra had succeeded in taking from him. Again.

An unwelcome thought occurred to him. Benedict could not help wondering if the liege Lintra had mentioned was, unlikely as it should be, his father.


End file.
